122 CORNISH DEDICATIONS. 



went to his door. The chief saw him coining. " Poor beggar," 

 said he, ' ' the hounds will not leave of him so much as a bit of 

 tripe." 



To his surprise, they fawned on him. 



Convinced that Erney was a Saint, he granted him as much 

 land as he could enclose. Erney drew his stalf after him and it 

 traced a ditch and bank that formed the bounds of his Minihi or 

 Sanctuary.* 



S. En VAN, King, Confessor. 

 Erbin, whom I take to be the same as Ervan, was the son of 

 Constantine the Cornishman, or the Blessed, whose brother Aldor 

 went to Brittany and founded a princely house in Armorican 

 Domnonia. Constantine, King of Devon and Cornwall, died 

 about 460. One of his sons was Ambrosius, who headed the 

 revolt of the Romanised Britons against Yortigern. 



The histories of Walter Mapes and Greoffrey are very 

 untrust-\Yorthy, yet there is probably a substratum of truth on 

 which much romance is built up. Their story is that the Britons 

 applied to Aldor, King of Armorica, for assistance ; upon which 

 he sent them his brother Constantine with a large army, and 

 defeated the barbarian Picts and Scots. The Triads, probably 

 relying on Geoffrey, make Constantine one of the three foreign 

 princes of Britain. The reverse is probably the case. Constantine 

 was home-bred, and Aldor migrated. Armorica in the 5th 

 century was in no position to send help to Britain. Erbin, Prince 

 of Devon, died about 480 ; and unhappily we know nothing 

 about him and his acts. 



It was perhaps due to this unsatisfactory condition of affairs 

 that the Bishops of Exeter changed the dedication of S. Ervan, 

 as they did of S. Erme, to Hermes, a martyr in the Roman 

 Calendar. 



In the Welsh Calendars S. Ervan's day is May 29, but at 

 Penrose, a large hamlet in S. Ervan, a fair is held on May 25. 



* Le Braz, in " Annales da Bretagne " T. IX (1894) p. 240. 



